Returning the Favor
by Poohdog
Summary: She made it okay to be clumsy; she made him laugh with funny faces when she read him stories; she made herself his favorite babysitter without even trying. And when it comes down to it, Neville wants to try and return the favor. FRIENDSHIP Neville/Tonks
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: *sigh* This disclaiming thing gets old. Okay, you know the drill. Not mine. I'm not J.K. Rowling and I'm not Warner Brothers.**

He didn't remember the first time she'd babysat him but he'd been told about it when he got old enough to understand more of the story. It crossed his mind when he went to see his parents in the hospital and when people talked about the Lestranges; whenever the unforgivable curse that had tortured his parents was brought up, whether in conversation, a lesson, or a battle. But of course he didn't remember. He'd only been a year old.

The war was considered well over by late November of 1981. There were still Death Eaters but they were all in hiding; they wouldn't dare blow their cover by attacking anyone. That night, there was a memorial service for Ministry personnel who had died in the war, and Neville's parents were going. His babysitter was only ten years old but she took her first babysitting job with utmost pride. It wasn't really much of a job, or wasn't supposed to be. It was only going to be a couple of hours, from eight till ten at the most. His parents had put him to bed and gotten him to sleep before she even got there. She was only there so someone would be there. And the little girl of ten had been told that if anything happened with Neville, all she would have to do was firecall the Ministry. Someone would be in the atrium and could send an owl to where the memorial service was happening.

"If you don't see anyone there," his mother told her as a precaution before she and his father left the house, "don't try and climb through. There are wards that prevent underage wizards and witches from entering the Ministry unaccompanied so you won't be able to get through the fire. Just firecall your dad at work, okay?" They also told her that the muggle couple next-door was home if anything was really urgently wrong with Neville but to be careful because they weren't accustom to magic and would be perplexed by many of the things in the house. And the girl of ten had agreed, still feeling very proud of herself that Frank and Alice Longbottom, friends of her mother, trusted her to watch their little boy.

For an hour and a half, she adopted a pattern of reading her book for five minutes and then rushing into Neville's nursery to check on him. But, returning to the living room with her book after one of these trips, she heard a noise. She heard voices and the sound of spells. The house shivered with a big burst of light and she knew one of the wards had been taken down. The voices became excited by the shiver in the house as Neville began to cry, and the little girl's stomach tossed uncomfortably as she assumed they were trying to break the next ward. It couldn't be Frank and Alice if they were taking down the wards. She admitted later, that her first thought was that she was scared and that she wanted to be home; her second thought was of Neville. So she had ran back to his nursery, picked him up, and, struggling with the weight of a crying one-year-old boy, had gotten to the fireplace, clumsily knocked the jar of Floo powder on the hearth over so that the powder flew into the flames, and fearfully called out the name of her own house.

From her own house, she flooed the Ministry, feeling a bit less afraid with her father's owl hooting in the den and her cat rubbing against the little boy she had set on the floor when she arrived home. She told the man in the atrium what had happened, and he quickly rushed an owl to go find Frank and Alice on the upper floor where the memorial was supposed to be. It was a few minutes later when her mother had come through the Floo and hugged her daughter in her arms. She told her Frank and Alice had already left when she'd firecalled. Alastor Moody said he would go and check that everything was alright. It wasn't until much later that they got the news. The Longbottom house had been broken in to by four Death Eaters. The Death Eaters had been captured but Frank and Alice were not alright. They had been tortured for information; they had been tortured into complete insanity by the time Moody and another couple Aurors had managed to get passed the new wards set by the younger Lestrange and Crouch. Perhaps the Death Eaters had wondered where the baby had been when they got into the house and waited, only briefly, for Alice and Frank to get back. However, as far as Neville knew, Bellatrix Lestrange had never known just how close she was to hurting not only the young couple and their son, but her own niece. When Neville had asked Tonks about the incident years later, she told him the thing she remembered most had been how when her mother had heard who had attacked Frank and Alice, she had grabbed her daughter in a tight hug and refused to let her go for at least five minutes.

Perhaps because they knew Frank and Alice had trusted her, perhaps because they had known Andromeda since before she had even been a Tonks, or perhaps because they was grateful that Nymphadora had unknowingly saved Neville's life, his grandparents had continued to let her babysit him. When she was younger and Neville's Gran was having a sort of meeting with other grown-ups, or was making a potion that needed all of her attention or something like that while her husband was at work, she would firecall little Nymphadora Tonks and ask if she would be willing to keep an eye on Neville for her. They were always in the same house as his Gran but Gran didn't have to worry about him or entertain him. And he had grown to love the little girl who came to play with him. He would run to the fire when she came tumbling in, yelling about his Dora. She could make such funny faces for him, and play with him. His favorite thing was when she told him stories. She could make her face and hair change to be the characters in his books. When he was younger he would just stare at her face, not even really paying attention to her words. As he got older, he stared to listen more and more. But he still paid more attention to her face.

She started Hogwarts just after he turned three. After that she only watched him during the summers or breaks but sometimes his grandmother would leave them alone in the house. And he still loved her. She made him feel like it was alright to be clumsy; she definitely was. She could still make him laugh with her funny faces. And he found out he could make her laugh. Not laugh at him as sometimes his relatives or kids he was tutored with did, but laugh with him when he told her stories of things that had happened. She taught him to laugh when he fell down because she did when she fell. And even as he grew older and remembered more and more of his babysitters clearly (most of them relatives) he still liked Tonks the best.

Which was why after the final battle, fighting not to make either of them cry, he had gone to Andromeda Tonks and told her that whenever she needed a babysitter for Teddy, she could definitely call Neville. She had reached out to hug him and neither of them had managed to keep their eyes dry.

**I know this is really random but I was wondering about why Neville wasn't at all hurt when the Death Eaters attacked his parents. I was also laughing at the idea of Tonks babysitting Draco (would have been the right age just a BIT too much family conflict for it to be likely) when I realized that Draco and Neville were the same age (I know duh) and that I'd set up a relationship between the Longbottoms and Andromeda in my head. So would Tonks at some point probably have babysat Neville? And think about it. Despite being together in the endings of the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, no one ever bothers to introduce them (okay so Tonks in unconscious in the fifth book, Neville in the sixth, and the seventh there were a lot of strange people but bear with me here!) Anyway, hope you enjoyed my really strange take. There will be a second chapter but likely not a third.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: *sigh* This disclaiming thing gets old. Okay, you know the drill. Not mine. I'm not J.K. Rowling and I'm not Warner Brothers.**

The first time he had a clear memory of being babysat by Tonks was when he was six. It was just after school had gotten out in June and she was fifteen. She had also seemed very sad. When she got there, she'd asked him if he wanted to read a story and he'd agreed happily. But when he got back to the room he saw how sad she looked. "You okay?" he asked, his eyes wide. He wondered if Tonks was hurt. Tonks got hurt when she fell sometimes, but she rarely looked like she was going to cry.

"Yep," she replied, managing to smile at him. He climbed over next to her, and she started reading the story he'd picked out, changing her faces. But she still looked sad.

"Are you hurt?" Neville questioned.

"No, I'm alright," she told him, smiling again. She kept reading on but Neville still thought she looked like she was about to cry. And her sad voice made the story sound funny.

"What's wrong?" he asked again. Tonks looked at him and sighed.

"There was a boy at school and I really liked him and I thought he really liked me, but he only liked me because I could morph, and when I wouldn't look exactly like he wanted me to, he broke up with me," she told him sadly, a pair of tears sliding down her cheeks.

"Broke up with you?" he asked with a frown.

"He said he wouldn't be my boyfriend anymore," she sniffled.

"Boyfriend?" Neville questioned. He knew what friends were and what boys were but why did she need to put the two words together?

"A boy who likes a girl more than a friend and they date and stuff," Tonks told him.

"Like Gran and Grandad?" he questioned.

"Sort of," she nodded, brushing at her eyes with her forearm. Neville looked at her for a long moment before speaking again.

"I'll marry you Tonks," he told her seriously. In an instant she smiled and, when he got older, Neville realized he had to give her credit for not laughing.

"Why do you think you want to marry me?" she asked, her voice sounding lighter than it had all day.

"Well, because John said he was going to marry Abby at Mrs. Berkley's house," Neville started. Mrs. Berkley was a witch in her early thirties with two kids already at Hogwarts. She tutored several students, including Neville. John and Abbey were both three years older than he was. "He said he knew he was going to marry her because she was a girl, he thought she was cute, she was good at 'ritmatic, and he'd be willing to share his cookie with her at lunch. You're a girl and you're cute and I think you're smart and I'd be willing to share a cookie with you," Neville explained. "So we should get married." Tonks smiled even more widely and then leaned down and kissed his forehead.

"I think we're both a bit young to get married but I'll remember your offer, okay?" she agreed. Neville nodded earnestly. Then she smiled again. "Do you really think I'm cute?" she teased, morphing her face to have a pig nose with larger-than-life eyes that were spread far apart, and spiky pea-soup colored hair. Neville giggled.

"I think you're cuter when you look like you normally do," he told her.

"Like this?" she asked, letting all her morphing go to be just a girl with a heart-shaped face and brown hair. Neville nodded and then picked up the story.

"Will you finish please?" She laughed and then began to read again, seeming happier, at least for the time being.

He remembered her looking that sad again when he ran into her in Hogsmeade one weekend during his sixth year. She was taking her lunch break from patrolling and he found her in the Three Broomsticks, pushing her food around her plate. "What's wrong?" he asked her after he sat down next to her. "Has somebody- I mean has anyone-" he didn't want to say it. What if someone had died?

"No," she told him. "Not that hasn't been in the Prophet," she added. Neville looked at her a little longer.

"Is it a boy?" he asked her, not able to prevent a slight drop of dislike from entering his voice. He couldn't help it; Tonks hardly needed a protector but in the issue of boys, he'd elected himself prime defender at the age of six, back when he was sure Tonks would someday be his bride. Tonks sighed and nodded. "Morphing?" Neville asked her. He had grown up knowing Tonks. To him, her gift was cool, but he still liked her as she was. She had trouble getting people to accept that. Her first boyfriend wasn't the last one who had liked her mostly because she could become whatever he wanted.

"No, actually," she replied.

"He wouldn't share his cookie?" Neville asked, attempting to laugh. She gave him a sad sort of smile.

"No, he'd share his cookie. He'd give me all of it if he thought I really wanted the cookie," she said, managing a more genuine smile.

"Do you mind if I ask what's wrong then?" he inquired uncertainly.

"I suppose you could say he thinks I'm too good for him," she told him with another sigh.

"You are too good for him," Neville told her stubbornly. He didn't say the other phrase that had occurred in his head: That's a switch. It wasn't that he thought Tonks wasn't worthy of the guys she had dated; he really did think the opposite. But they often had the tendency to think that she was just a toy.

"You don't even know who he is," Tonks reminded him, a smile still on her face.

"Well he's not good enough for you, whoever he is," Neville insisted. "And he's an idiot if he doesn't see that and ask you to marry him while you seem to think he's worthy enough." She smiled again. "And if it will make him see sense, you can tell him that we have a pre-existing agreement as soon as I'm of age if neither of us is already married." Tonks laughed, brightening up her young face. Then her eyes caught on the clock. She tripped out of her chair, placed down the money for her food, and gave him a hug.

"Thank you Neville. I needed a laugh."

"Anytime," he told her truthfully before she waved good-bye and hurried away to get back to her job. A few months later, in late June, he heard that she had gotten married to Remus Lupin. Neville sent him a cookie. He got a letter from Tonks a day later.

_He offered me the whole cookie and when I said I'd take half, he broke it apart and gave me the bigger piece. And in case you're wondering, he thinks I look best when I don't change anything (though he doesn't mind pink hair either). Sorry to break our engagement. Please don't be too mad!_

So when Teddy Lupin heard that his father had left his mother two times, it was Neville who was able to assure him that Teddy's father had loved his mother very much. Because at seven Teddy was able to understand love as being willing to give up a cookie. At seventeen he was able to understand loving someone too much.

**Probably last chapter. I was just writing something random and this popped into my head. Sorry it took so long to update. I have a combination of, um, well let's call it writer's ADD, and new classes... (Stupid O-Chem. Like the teacher. Gonna hate the class)**


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